Airport authority planned

UNC system will lead the effort

CHAPEL HILL -- The Board of Governors of the UNC system will establish an airport authority to replace Horace Williams Airport in Orange County.

Officials had initially chosen the UNC Health Care System to head the effort, system CEO Bill Roper said in an interview earlier this month.

But after more discussion, officials decided to have the Board of Governors take the lead, with equal representation from UNC Health Care and UNC-Chapel Hill, said Kevin FitzGerald, executive associate dean at the School of Medicine.

The 15 member authority will include:

* Four members each from the university and health care system.

* One member appointed by the state House speaker.

* One member appointed by the Senate president pro tem.

* Three members appointed by the Orange County Board of Commissioners.

* One member appointed by the Chapel Hill Town Council.

* One member appointed on a rotating basis by the Carrboro Board of Aldermen and Hillsborough Town Board.

The airport authority will have the power of eminent domain, the acquisition of private land for public purposes.

Barry Jacobs, chairman of the Orange County commissioners, said county leaders had hoped for more discussion before state lawmakers passed the bill authorizing an airport authority.

But Jacobs said he's glad the Board of Governors and not UNC Health Care will be in charge of establishing the authority.

"I think that's better," he said. "The university system people may have a broader view of what the priorities of the community are."

FitzGerald said the university is in the "very early stages" of considering the authority.

The bill limits the authority to Orange County, and he said he didn't know whether that precluded the possibility of an airport going in nearby Chatham or Alamance. In the past, doctors at the university's Area Health Education Centers program have said they needed an airport within 20 minutes of campus.

He did say the university sees the airport being used by the broader community.

"We recognize general aviation is very important in Orange County," he said. "A facility like this would be utilized by many small planes and pilots."

UNC-CH officials have said they need to close the airport to make room for the Carolina North research campus. The university is building a hangar at Raleigh-Durham International Airport to temporarily house its fleet.

At a hearing in Raleigh last year, AHEC doctors said closing the airport would hurt poor, sick children in remote parts of the state. But only a handful out of approximately 30 take-offs or landings per day transport doctors to and from medical clinics.

Fewer than one in four of the airport's flights are for medical purposes, according to statistics from the UNC-CH medical school and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Three-quarters of all flights involve private planes, most of those for private purposes.